Thread by @RWMaloneMD

For decades the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has been America's self-appointed watchdog of hate groups. A new federal superseding indictment suggests it may have spent years quietly funding them. The story is so strange Hollywood would have rejected the script as too implausible. 🧵

Per a New York Post report on the indictment, a senior SPLC official, identified by the Post as former Intelligence Project director Heidi Beirich, allegedly directed roughly $1.2 million in donor funds to a confidential informant embedded in the neo-Nazi National Alliance. The twist: prosecutors allege the informant was also her lover.

According to the indictment, the two shared a home and joint bank accounts. Around $140,000 in donor money allegedly flowed into those accounts between 2015 and 2021, reportedly about 66% of everything ever deposited there, and went toward the couple's personal living expenses.

Strip away the labels and the alleged scheme is simple. Donor money meant to fight neo-Nazis was allegedly paid to a neo-Nazi, deposited in a shared account, and spent on the couple's bills. In ordinary language that has names: theft, or money laundering.

And it allegedly was not one rogue actor. The DOJ accuses the SPLC of routing more than $4 million in tax-exempt funds to informants inside extremist groups, while using those same groups as fundraising targets. One alleged recipient was an Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America.

Imagine donating to fight neo-Nazis only to learn your check may have helped pay one's mortgage. It is roughly like discovering your anti-smoking charity had quietly put the Marlboro Man on retainer.

This is bigger than the SPLC. Entire industries now exist to find threats, monitor threats, fundraise against threats, and publicize threats. If your business model depends on monsters under the bed, you have every incentive to make sure the monsters never disappear. Or to manufacture new ones. Another self-licking ice cream cone.

One thing is already clear. If a conservative group stood accused of funneling donor money through a romance to a neo-Nazi operative, we would have twenty-four-hour wall-to-wall coverage. Instead, much of the liberal press seems oddly incurious. Apparently some hate groups are more special than others.

There is a sequel. After leaving the SPLC in 2020, that same official co-founded a new anti-extremism outfit, funded not by small donors but by a familiar roster of foundations. Discovery has a funny way of turning career investigators into the ones suddenly answering questions.

To be clear: no one named has been convicted, and the successor group has not been charged. But the coming trial is really about accountability. At what point does infiltrating an organization become subsidizing it? This case may force a jury to decide exactly where that line sits.

Our full piece on the SPLC, the indictment, and the hate-industrial complex that grew up around it:

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